I recently read the article posted by Steven D. Levitt (author of Freakonomics) on his New York Time’s blog. Entitled Tattoonomics, Part I (presumably there will be a Part II), Levitt raises the question, “Why get a tattoo?”
I have tattoos and I get asked this question all the time. I fondly remember getting caught in a surprise pincer attack on the subject of tattoos last April by both my father and my boyfriend’s parents while we drank coffee at a restaurant in Osaka. Apparently, my boyfriend casually mentioned to his mother that he was thinking about getting another tattoo during a Skype conversation a few weeks earlier. He probably didn’t think much of it, unaware that even mentioning a hypothetical future tattoo to his mother was the equivalent of dropping an A-bomb right in the middle of their dining room. (And, no, that metaphor wasn’t meant to express any insensitivity towards the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki).
Clearly, both his mother and father had mulled over this tantalizing morsel of information for quite a while before I came to visit them in Osaka. They were quite eager to bring the subject up with me and plead, “Don’t let him get another tattoo!”
I replied that I have no control over his decisions; what he decides to do with his body is up to him. I honestly was surprised that it was still such at big deal to them – at this moment my boyfriend has four tattoos on his body. I mean, the jig is up people! But, both my boyfriend and his parents are Japanese, so the whole ‘tattoo’ thing is a pretty big issue for them. Regardless of the fact that he is only a few months away from finishing his PhD in Particle Astrophysics, the fact that he is tattooed places him on the same level as dangerous yakuza thug according to the Japanese visual hierarchy.
At that moment, my father took it upon himself to chime in that he, too, can’t understand why those crazy youngsters (his daughter included) would get themselves tattooed. Imagine what repercussions that decision will have on our future employment opportunities! Though, if Levitt’s statistic is correct and 40% of Americans between the ages of 26 and 40 have a tattoo, then being tattooed really isn’t necessarily going to condemn us to minimum wage jobs for the rest of our lives.
What I found most surprising was that my father included himself in the conversation even though last summer he begrudgingly admitted that my tattoos actually look good. Granted, we were rock climbing and I guess that he only liked my tattoos in that particular setting, when they made me look like a ‘hardcore rock-climber chick.’ But, the simple fact of the matter is that he likes my tattoos, he just doesn’t like the fact that they are on his daughter. (On a side note – even my brother, who is my father’s poster-child for ‘aspiring Harvard Business School graduate,’ has a tattoo. My brother and I went to the tattoo shop together, for god’s sake!)
But anyways, back to Levitt’s article. Levitt only raises one other possibility before reaching his conclusion. He mentions that people might just enjoy tattoos for their intrinsic beauty. Levitt quickly dismisses this option because of the frequency in which people get tattooed in areas that aren’t easily visible. He mentions the lower back as an example (though people getting their lower backs tattooed nowadays are fools condemning themselves to a lifetime of ‘tramp-stamp’ and ‘cum-catcher’ comments).
Levitt concludes that people are motivated to get tattoos in order to “signal something about themselves to a potential mate.” This argument might be valid for some people, particularly men who are aware of the female weakness for ‘bad boys.’ But, if that is the case, then I would say that an equal number of men get tattoos not as a signal to the opposite sex but as a signal to other men. I’ve known my fair share of testosterone-soaked marines with tribal tattoos around their biceps to know that some men are more motivated by a desire to earn respect within their group of friends than to pick up chicks.
My personal motivations for getting tattoos were neither A) the desire to attract male attention, as Levitt suggests nor B) to make myself look like a hardcore rock-climber chick, as my father suggests.
In my experience, having tattoos has never helped me pick up men. In fact, I have found that tan lines are more successful in attracting male attention than tattoos. (And, in case you were wondering, “Guess X marks the spot, huh?” is NOT an acceptable pickup line to use on the girl who is standing in front of you at Mountain Chalet waiting to purchase rock climbing chalk, even if there IS an X-shaped tan line on her back from her sports bra).
Making myself seem like a “person who is wild, impulsive, and likes risks” in order to attract a man has never been my motivation for getting tattooed. First, I am not wild, impulsive or a risk-taker. I am, in fact, a neurotic control-freak who carefully obsesses about every aspect of her life before making any decision whatsoever. Case in point, I considered both of my tattoos for several years before finally getting them. Second, getting my spine permanently inked by a vibrating needle gun for over an hour is not something I would do for a guy.
In my case, it was not the tattoos themselves that were significant to me, but the decision to get them permanently added to my body (though I do find them extremely aesthetically pleasing to look at). Getting tattooed was a personal signal to myself (not to others) about how I want to live my life. I don’t want to spend my life worrying about whether or not I will be happy with my decisions when I am 50 years old. I tried living my life that way – it didn’t work.
As for my boyfriend, he seems to have a life-experience attitude towards his tattoos. What I like to call “the scrap-booking method of tattooing.” He wants to get a tattoo in every place that has held special significance to him – Australia, Hawaii, San Diego, Boston, etc. I have another friend who has covered a large majority of his body with Japan/samurai-related images – from a large noh mask to sumi-e artwork.
But the thing that bothered me most about Levitt’s conclusion was the implication that people who get tattoos are somehow slutty. This perception applies primarily to women, because it’s perfectly acceptable to sleep with everything that walks if you are a man. Levitt’s statement that “a tattoo is a signal that a person is wild, impulsive, and likes risk” therefore making them more desirable sexual partners implies that the women who get tattooed want to be perceived as wild, impulsive risk-takers. I guess the logic here is that if a girl is wild and impulsive, she is more likely to impulsively sleep with you. And before you rip my throat out for being a rampaging feminist here, I’d like to point out that Levitt follows up this statement with, “I suppose those are traits I once would have sought in a woman, although they certainly wouldn’t be at the top of my list now!” Right, because it’s ok to have sex with the slutty tattooed girls, but you certainly wouldn’t want to marry them and bring them home to Mom.
The simple fact of the matter is that, nowadays, tattoos are main stream. They don’t single you out as an ex-convict, a Russian mobster, or as a particularly wild and crazy individual. So, I remain unconvinced by Levitt’s reasoning in Tattoonomics, Part I. Hopefully, he’ll present some different conclusions in Part II.
If any of you readers have tattoos, I’d be interested in hearing about what motivated you to get them.
Tags: constantine in tokyo, constantineintokyo, tattoo, tattoonomics, tattoos
blind intensity
I have “ongaku” in kanji written on my ankle.
It combines my love for music, Japanese culture, and the art of kanji all into one sweet little package.
I’ve always seen tattoos as the ultimate art. It takes a specific talent to perform this art, and i feel that those with tattoos should be honored to have such a unique piece of work that they can take with them everywhere. -end preaching-
I simply wanted to show my devotion to some of my deepest passions in a way that i would never lose sight of them.
Wow. I really sound preachy. ^^;;
constantineintokyo
You sound far less preachy than I did! I’ll add another check in the ‘didn’t get tattooed to attract a sex partner’ category!
amannin
Well, I myself don’t have any tattoos — but not because I am against them in anyway. Actually, if I were to ever get a tattoo, it would likely be in the same way both of you have mentioned, i.e. something that is meaningful & symbolic and likely written in words / letters / characters.
The kind of tattoos that I don’t like however, are the aesthetically pleasing “body art” and or conversation starter types. Not to say that tattoos can’t/shouldn’t look good or be conversation starters, but if those were your main/only reasons, then that really says a lot (and not in a good way) about the quality of your character (which are the types I think Levitt is referring to).
Also, a tattoo as a meaningful reminder is okay in my book too ^^
constantineintokyo
I agree with you about those conversation-starter tattoos. I’ve met quite a few people who have that mustache tattooed on the inside of their index finger (so that they can hold it put to their upper lip and look like idiots in pictures)…honestly, what’s the point of that??? >.<
Midori
I used to teach a course on the tattoo when I taught at an all boys highschool — My primary interest was how the literary tattoo (for example Tanazaki’s awesome short story “The Tattooer” and Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back” ) functioned in short stories — but along the way, we also studied the cultural history of tattooing ranging from the Pazyryks to the Maori, to the Russian Prison tats (everything in between). I told the boys they would fail the course if they got a tattoo while I was teaching it — figuring an angry parent somewhere would blame me for putting the idea in their head. Their response was to pull off shirts, roll up pant legs, reveal hips, and display a pretty impressive range of tattooes — many of them parent approved, some gack, unknown to their parents. But the reasons were for the most part really interesting and very little to do with impressing girls — for some it was the custom of the boys in their family, or it was a memorial to a lost sibling, or it was an image of integrity that they wanted to live up to, and oh yes, it was a salute to their mother or their faith. Almost all of them had designed them themselves (with varying degree of talent — some were spectacular, some…less so).
It was a pretty interesting couple of semesters…and I would recommend having a look at “Dorothy Parker’s Elbow: Tattooes and Writers, Writers on Tattooes” edited by Kim Addonozio. And google Shelly Jackson’s amazing little project “Skin” — a 2,000 word short story, tattooed one word at a time on random people who volunteered for the project.
constantineintokyo
Thanks for the great book recommendations, I will definitely read them! I’ve already read Tanazaki’s The Tattooer – that story was almost awesome enough for me to get a massive spider tattooed on my back. Almost, but not quite. =) It’s interesting, most of the people I know with tattoos have recently received PhDs or are graduate students. All of their tattoos have really interesting reasons and stories behind them. I will never forget when a close friend of mine – a very clean cut philosophy student – whipped off his shirt one day and revealed that nearly all of his upper body was covered in tattoos. Standards have definitely changed in that past 20 years!
HanziDrown
I’ve always seen tattoos to be an easy way to express small parts of yourself that couldn’t easily be defined in words. The love you felt for a family member, the profound hope you put into your faith, the dream of becoming the protector you think you need to be, love for your “insert word here”, ect. ect.
Most of the symbolism may be lost in translation, though. So something as obscene as a unicorn humping a dolphin could in fact show some strange person’s… “love” for dolphins and outsider view of themselves and being on the ass would somewhat assure that few people would be able to misinterpret it’s reasoning.
But I’m also sure a unicorn humping a dolphin is just a unicorn humping a dolphin. There are plenty unmotivated tattoo’s spawned from long drunken nights, pressure fueled dares, hate filled anti-parent/school/government/other establishment decisions, and others I can’t think of right now.
But mostly it’s an expression of yourself. A near permanent choice to put into stone a thought, feeling, or ideal you want to instill in yourself for as far as you can see.
constantineintokyo
Hahaha, I agree, a unicorn humping a dolphin is probably just a tattoo of a unicorn humping a dolphin!
Heath
I just recently found and subscribed to your wonderful little chunk of the internet and enjoy it very much. I am what you would call a nerd. Honestly I am the male version of of you ( hope that doesn’t sound creepy) with the sarcasm, obsession with japan, and being a baka otaku(myself…i am not calling you stupidly obsessed) but I’ve never thought of getting them for the sole purpose of getting girls or trying to fit in or look “cool” I have the Nerv logo from Evangelion tattooed on my leg for christ sake!! I get tattoos mainly for the reason of having things that are important to me, close to me at all times. I really don’t care what others think about them at all. Strangely enough most of my friends that have tattoos feel the same way. I agree with you 100% about the implication of “tattoos are for sexually promiscuous people” it’s a blanket statement!!
constantineintokyo
Hello Male Version of Me,
Don’t worry, I fully recognize that I am stupidly obsessed with many things! I’m sure that in certain circles your NERV tattoo actually would attract girls. I once dated a guy solely because he could play the Evangelion theme song on the piano. Not the best basis for a relationship, but I was 15 at the time and thus insane. =P
Thanks for reading!
lily
i have about 20% of my body covered in tattoos now — two half sleeves, and a few other pieces scattered around the rest of my body — and it’s nothing about signaling anything to anybody. for me, i’ve struggled with body image issues my whole life, and for me tattoos and piercings are a way of demonstrating agency. of saying that this is my body, and it can be whatever i want it to be. i’m not my skin or my muscles or my bones or my scars. i’m a signal hosted by these things, and my body can be beautiful on my terms instead of anyone else’s.